


And I Used to Think You Were Sea Glass when you were really the ocean

by odoridango



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: But kind of not really, Canon - Manga, Canon Compliant, Eren Yeager Has Heterochromia Iridum, Levi Squad 2.0, M/M, Titan Shifting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-30
Updated: 2015-01-30
Packaged: 2018-03-09 16:38:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,251
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3256949
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/odoridango/pseuds/odoridango
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Eren wakes up from his last bout of titan shifting, he's not quite the same as he was before. His eyes are a bit different.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And I Used to Think You Were Sea Glass when you were really the ocean

**Author's Note:**

> Also for JE week, for Day 2: Pranking, though it's less to do with actual pranking and more to do with deception and hiding. Believe it or not, this was actually written before the heterochromia thing really hit. I tend to think of this one and "Palmistry" as thematic companions.

When Eren emerges from the infirmary on a weekday morning, he’s not exactly the same as he used to be. 

“Your eyes,” Armin says, stunned. “They’re different.”

Eren says something, sharp, low and foreign.

Armin’s brow furrows. “What?”

“I told you that everything coming out of that mouth was nonsense,” Jean crows, triumphant. “Looks like I was right!”

“Fuck off, Kirschtein,” Eren growls, and for a moment, Jean is pinned to the spot, mesmerized by the odd shock of meeting Eren’s eyes. One of them is the usual, prismatic blue-turquoise-green, but the other is golden, flickering in tawny shades of brown and orange in the morning light, feral. Eren repeats the sound again. “It’s dialect,” he explains, fiddling awkwardly with his overlong cardigan sleeves, and Jean could swear it’s the same, dull, brown cardigan Eren had at twelve. “It means chameleon. Mom used to call me that, because she said I had hazel eyes as a baby, and I woke up one day and they were green instead.”

Mikasa tugs at her scarf. “I don’t remember Auntie Carla calling you that,” she says.

“It was before I met you,” Eren says, and Jean scowls because Eren still hasn’t told anyone how he and Mikasa met.

“It’s pretty,” Sasha offers, leaning a little more into his space, peering into his face intently. “Like the amber you find in trees sometimes, except without bugs and stuff inside.”

“Sasha, that’s gross,” Connie says, wrinkling his nose. He’s been more subdued lately, for good reason, but he seems better now that Sasha’s with them. The two of them have always been peas in a pod, and they seem to have gotten even closer since their time apart.

“It’ll turn back to green then, won’t it?” Historia says quietly, curiosity edging onto her usually somber face. Ymir’s absence has been taking its toll.

“Probably? It’s not really important. As long as I can see, who cares what color my eyes are?” Eren says, shrugging affectedly before heading off to the Captain’s office to see what chores he’s on rotation for.

Eren’s wrong. Pretty much everybody cares, because it’s somehow unnerving to look him in the face and see the gold glinting back. Eren is the closest that any of them have come to knowing how eyes can be the windows to the soul, but now he’s too transparent, and the things he can’t say bubble over in his eyes, the reasons why he’s a little quieter and more distant than he used to be, the way he hesitates, and bites his tongue before he speaks. He’s stilted, and with his one golden eye, the imbalance is manifest.

The sun is close to setting, and Eren stands next to one of the windows at the front of the cabin, picking out the splinters from his hands, having just finished chopping the pile of firewood out back. The wooden shutter bathes him in shadow, and when he hears Jean approaching, the gold shimmers in the darkness, sparks a shiver that darts down Jean’s spine, cold and wary.

“Your eye,” Jean says. “It’s not back to normal yet.”

“No,” Eren says. “It’s not.”

“Do you see anything differently?”

“No. An eye’s an eye.”

Eren stares at him mutely for a little, before his lashes lower and he returns to picking at his hand.

“You’re shit at that.”

Jean’s mouth moves without his permission and suddenly, he’s close, Eren’s hand in his. Eren’s hands are smooth, and when they aren’t, they’re oozy and covered in blood and pus, because he can’t form callouses. His nails, Jean notices, are bitten to the quick; there’s no red half-moon to mark where Eren’s teeth have sunk to bone. Dried blood on the tan of Eren’s palm, on and around the areas where the splinters have split his skin. Dramatic as always, Jean thinks with a huff, breath gusting warm onto Eren’s arm as he bends over his comrade’s hand, plucks out the splinters when he sees them.

When he looks up to ask for Eren’s other hand, Eren’s right there, face so close Jean would only have to lean in a couple centimeters for their noses to brush. And he’s still fractured, the green unfathomable and the gold so clear, faceted, light refracted and reflected, and Jean never knew before, how much Eren didn’t say, sees it in the way Eren looks at him, utterly still, mouth in a line, something desperate strangling him, rooting him here, forcing him to hide in the shadows.

“What’re you doing here,” Jean whispers, reaching for Eren’s other hand, and even as he lifts it to chest level, he can’t look away from the emotion that swells there, in the small space between Eren’s lips as they part just so, in the unnamed anxiety that pools in that single gold eye, the only scar, the only mark Eren’s ever borne of his shifters’ nature.

“I can’t be seen,” Eren says, and his hand is steady and warm.

“Can’t you?” Jean asks, challenging him.

“No,” Eren says, swallowing, his hand curling in on itself, but Jean forces him to splay it out, pinches and digs at the deepest splinter. “I can’t be seen,” he repeats, lashes fluttering, head drifting low, close to Jean’s.

“What did she call you,” Jean says suddenly, and his hand convulses around Eren’s, gathers it close.

“What?”

“Your mother. What did she call you? You said it was in dialect.”

Eren, stunned, green and gold beauty like the Trost church windows, and the syllables roll over his tongue, lips pursing, parting, shaping the word as it fills the space between them.

“Again,” Jean says, and Eren blinks, slow, and this time Jean says it too, follows the articulation of Eren’s voice with his mouth, chases it until he breathes it right against Eren’s lips, says it again and again until he sees that church glass shatter, until he’s gotten Eren pressed up next against the window, rusted, soft hands clasped between their chests. Eren chokes on it, chest hitching like he can’t breathe, and Jean clutches his face, kisses him, open-eyed and wondering, as gold turns to green.

Eren doesn’t cry, but his hands are curled softly on Jean’s chest like wilted flowers, and Jean strokes his cheek with the back of a hand, wondering, says the word one more time, watches Eren shudder at the sound, and it’s not that Eren’s eyes had really ever changed, it’s that Eren had changed, Eren had learned to hide, learned how not to be seen.

Eren’s hand lifts, traces the line of his brow, and they shift closer, looking into each other’s eyes as they meet in the middle, just feeling each other, lip to lip, chaste and comfortable. Eren says another word, and Jean feels it against his skin, the way it’s a kiss against his lips when Eren purses his mouth for an explosive syllable, the way it’s a soft, pleasured sigh when Eren drops his jaw for the vowel.

“That’s yours,” Eren says, voice curling like smoke, and he closes his eyes slowly, like he’s about to lie down and sleep forever. Jean kisses him and kisses him and kisses him, pries him back open, breathes the word into him until Eren remembers, chameleon, chameleon, not in the way he thinks, not in the ways he feels, chameleon, but green and bright and beautiful blending right into Jean’s skin, past the skin, bone and muscle, into the heart of him, into the heart.


End file.
